


Fine. Normal. Okay.

by heddychaa



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-25
Updated: 2010-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:33:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heddychaa/pseuds/heddychaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They keep talking past the issue, standing back and watching the poison spread.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fine. Normal. Okay.

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to [Nice, Nice, Very Nice](http://community.livejournal.com/hauldyourwhist/23192.html). count_to_seven cheerleader-d and beta-d, and lullabelle and azn_jack_fiend were both always around to bounce ideas off of and listen to my complaining. This fic takes place soon after KKBB and Jack's return from travelling with the Doctor.

A tap drips. Ianto breathes. The rhythm never quite syncs up in a sensible way.

Jack is sitting on the end of the couch, Ianto's calf clasped in one hand. Ianto is asleep: curled up on his side like a child, naked but for the still-damp towel looped around his waist, his knobby knees bent to his belly. His hair has dried curly. His mouth is half open, his lips wet, bitten red. His hands, held to his cheek, are slack, fingers bowed to his palms.

Jack is looking at these things. The whiteness of his skin in the half-light, the trail of hair up to his bellybutton, the shape of his ribs appearing under his skin as he inhales, the dark curves of his eyelashes on his cheeks. Trying to relearn him, trying to close his eyes and picture his natural body, his furrowed brow and his laugh full of crooked teeth and his flexing forearms, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow.

The kitchen light is still on. From his vantage point on the couch, Jack can see that the kitchen table has been knocked askew. Ianto's kitchen table, where Jack has eaten toast and drunk coffee from an unfamiliar mug and sat watching Ianto washing the dishes, opening the fridge, pulling armloads of wet underwear from the washer.

It's never going to be like that ever again.

There are bruises on Ianto's knees, circling his wrists: marbled blue and yellow and burgundy as wine. And those will fade, and the cut on his forehead doesn't even look so bad now that he's washed away the blood and strapped a plaster over it. The marker's been meticulously scrubbed away, but every time Jack opens his eyes to Ianto, every time he _blinks_ , the first thing he sees are those _words_ , stamped across Ianto's face, across Jack's eyes, as inescapable as specks floating past his retinas.

And it makes Jack feel powerless, and he hates Ianto, and he hates himself. (For not stopping it, for hating Ianto for not stopping it.) Both of them are marked.

He finds and replaces the cap for the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the coffee table, twisting it home. Picks up the glass lying upended on the floor, arm's length from where Ianto's sleeping, and sets it safely by the bottle. His hand returns to Ianto's calf, just above his ankle, palming over the coarse hair like Ianto's body is something foreign to him. Eventually he lifts Ianto's leg—just a little, and slowly—and bends toward it. He plants a goodbye kiss dead centre on the sole of Ianto's foot.

Ianto doesn't smile in his sleep. Just winces and flutters the lashes of his closed eyes as if he's confused.

\--

Jack isn't brave enough to go into the kitchen, so he leaves the light on. He locks up behind him, and just the action of doing that, the inherent futility of it, makes every inch of him ache. But he can't take up residence in Ianto's living room like a gargoyle, can't find a place tucked up in his armchair or standing like a shadow against his wall.

Instead, he sends a text:

 _Feel free to take the day off._

\- J

and walks the streets of Ianto's neighbourhood, cagey, until dawn.

\--

The next day Ianto takes Jack up on his offer, so they have to make their own coffee. Tosh and Gwen, at least, make a college try at picking up after themselves, but it's mostly a losing battle.

Jack watches them all out of the corner of his eye, scrutinizing, just to be sure. But Gwen still smiles at him as easily as ever (although there's still that sense she hasn't quite forgiven him for leaving), and Tosh still looks on him warmly when he puts his hand on her shoulder, and Owen is as ornery and playfully cruel as always, the same cover for the same scars.

By the end of the day, Jack hasn't heard anything from Ianto one way or the other, so he locks the door to his office and gives him a call.

"I'm fine," Ianto says. His voice is hoarse, tired. "A little sore, but fine."

He doesn't invite Jack over, and Jack doesn't dare presume to suggest it.

\--

He pumps his cock furiously, eyes closed, the slick of precome wet across the pad of his thumb. He thinks about Gwen's tits, Tosh's ankles, the smell of the Doctor's leather coat, his mouth on Rose's cunt, disembodied body parts and half-remembered smells and little vivid snatches of sensation from five years ago and fifty, but not Ianto, anything but Ianto, and then his stomach is clenching and his legs are flexing, and all he can picture is Ianto's face covered in blood and come, and those words, John's unhinged handwriting, the dimpling of Ianto's skin as the point of the felt pen _presses down_ , the fishhook shape of the 'J', and Jack is coming, eyes screwed shut and panting, and he feels the hot spurt across his belly and all he wants, dizzy from the high of his orgasm, is to paint Ianto's face with it.

\--

It's morning, again, and Ianto is at his shoulder, again, just like always, charcoal grey suit and neatly knotted red tie, crisp iris cologne, and Jack's usual mug, scalding hot. For exactly one minute, Jack pretends things are normal, can be normal, and then Ianto is leaning over to set the mug down on his desk.

When he extends his arm, the cuff of his sleeve slides back a fraction, exposing the mound of his wrist bone, the mottled green of the bruise circling his wrist. Jack waits for his hand to withdraw, his fingers to leave the mug's handle, before he reaches for it himself.

The desk creaks as Ianto leans back against it, and out of the corner of his eye Jack can see him crossing his legs, tucking his hands in his pockets. It means he feels awkward. Out of place, maybe. Or useless. Jack can feel his eyes on him, watching him, just like always. Jack raises his coffee and blows across the surface.

He should be kind. "Thanks," he says.

Ianto sighs. "Will that be all, then?"

Jack can't know for sure if that's all there is to it, if there isn't some double-meaning, some dark thing lurking behind that innocuous phrase, a question Ianto'd asked a hundred times with plain intent, that Jack had been happy to take at face value, _before_. It's like the two of them are holding a wishing bone between them, lightly gripped, and waiting for it to snap.

Jack should look at him.

Eventually, Jack is going to have to look at him.

"I'll see you later, then," Ianto says, as though he can't bear the silence. The desk shifts as he pushes himself to standing, and then his footsteps, at a meticulously measured pace, lead his shadow out the door.

(Eventually, Jack is going to have to face him.)

\--

"Jack?" Gwen asks, and he looks over his shoulder at her. She's holding a manila folder, she's tapping it on the table. "You alright?

He nods, dumbfounded, blinking like he's half-asleep.

"Okay..." she says, a little agitated, a little disbelieving, begrudgingly concerned. "Well, I do still need an answer from you on what we're telling the mayor about..."

There's a splotch of broken capillaries high on Ianto's cheek, cherubic pink. Jack's stomach is _churning_.

"Maybe if you could stop staring at the teaboy like he's got two heads?" Owen suggests, very loud.

Oh, they're all looking at him. Waiting for something.

"It's just a bruise, Jack," Ianto says.

\--

He overhears them when he's walking past the photocopy room. Gwen's hand is on the small of his back, pink-white against the grey of his suit jacket.

"You can talk to me," she says, and that stops Jack in his tracks. He tucks himself out of view of the doorway, back against the wall.

There's a pause. "I got drunk and picked a fight I couldn't win," he hears Ianto reply, artificially bland.

"Do you expect me to believe that?" Jack pictures her huge eyes, her knit brow, her hand on the inside of Ianto's elbow.

"Honestly." He sounds tired. "That's it. So really, you're wasting your pity."

"It's not _pity_ , Ianto." She huffs a frustrated sigh, searching for words. "It's... I'm worried, that's all."

"Well, I brought it on myself, didn't I? Lesson learned."

Even Ianto, practiced liar that he is, can't quite disguise the bitterness behind his words. A lie looping to bite its own tail and become a kind of truth again.

It's a poison. It taints everything.

\--

"Hey!" Ianto calls out, gruffly.

Jack doesn't turn. He's halfway down the stairwell to the sublevels. Once he's inside he can disappear.

"I said—" an aggressive push to Jack's shoulder, causing him to stumble down the last three or four steps "— _Hey_."

Jack rounds on him, half-pulled by his grip on Jack's shoulder, finds him standing on the bottom step with his hands balled into fists at his sides, nostrils flaring, jaw locked. His eyes are big and dark, half-wild; Jack hasn't seen him looking like this since...

And then, just like that, his face is sad, the tension in his mouth snapping apart. "Do you," he starts, and his pupils flicker to the side, like he's afraid of making or holding eye contact, "Do you have something to say to me?"

The weakness in his expression; the fear in anticipation of the answer, playing out in his trembling, tight-wound posture. It's not like it was with Lisa at all, when he'd been misguided but brave, hate and fear and grief making him strong. This is just defiance, born out of knowing that defiance is all he has left.

Now it's Jack's turn to push. He shoves Ianto bodily against the wall. There's a crack when the back of his skull whips against the cement. Jack fumbles down his arms, going for his wrists. "I don't know," he barks back, slamming and pinning Ianto's wrists to the wall on either side of his face. Ianto writhes under his body, as if this is foreplay. As far as what's actually been said between them, what's been admitted, it could be. Jack shoves their foreheads together, growling against Ianto's mouth: "Do _you_ have something to say to _me_?"

Ianto's wrists twist in his hands. He lets out a pitiful whine.

Something inside Jack breaks. He loses his resolve, all that resentment draining away as Ianto's eyes close, as Ianto moans, "No."

Jack sighs through his nose. His thumbs brush over Ianto's wrists, gentling him, tracing the line of the bruises. Ianto's head drops, slack on his neck. Jack presses a kiss into his brow, lips touching the fabric of the butterfly plaster. He can't love him anymore, not like this. Not with this lie between them, this secret neither will admit they're keeping. Not when he pities Ianto this much, and is this aware of his weakness, and is wishing this hard that he weren't such a fucking coward. His palm drags down the right side of Ianto's face, as though he can feel out, like Braille, the imprints of the words.

"That's what I thought," Jack says, and lets him go.

\--

"I _knew_ you'd call," John crows. He is sitting on the roof's edge, feet dangling out over the street. His back is silhouetted by the orange glow of the street lamps below. "Did you like my picture?"

"I could push you to your death," Jack says, talking past him. He bends to pick up a rock, turning it over in his hand, inspecting it. He tosses it off the roof, only barely missing John's ear. "It'd look like a suicide."

"No it wouldn't," John says. "Different trajectories, being pushed and jumping. Even these twenty-first century apes would be able to puzzle it out."

"You forget I'm above the law here," Jack replies. "And they're not apes."

"Oh no? They seem rather simple to me. From my rather in-depth studies of them, anyway." He casts a look over his shoulder, catching Jack's eye. He's smiling and baring his teeth.

"Don't you _dare_ ," Jack snarls. He takes two quick paces forward and then stops. His whole body is shaking.

"Or you'll do what, Jack, really?" A breeze lifts his coat, toys minutely with his short-cropped hair. He is beautiful and dangerous and remote. "You think killing me will make this right again? Do you think that's what he wants? For me to strip him down to _absolutely nothing_ and then for you to waltz in, get revenge on his behalf, and take his one chance at redemption?"

Jack can feel his heart thumping behind his ribcage.

"But I suppose this is _your_ chance for redemption too, isn't it? Because if I get away with this, what does that make _you_?"

Frankly, he doesn't know. He doesn't want to know. John tilts his face to the sky, taking in the few scattered stars. "You wanna know a secret, sweetheart?" he asks.

Jack is nodding before he's even weighed his options, before he's even thought through what nodding _means_.

John's expression is far away, like he's reminiscing. "When I had him on his knees, with my cock in his arse and my gun to his head, I told him I'd kill him, and do you know what he did? Called your name. Called your name until he fucking _came_." He licks his teeth, pleased. "Of course, you never did show up. Some hero. Luckily for him, though, he was a good enough fuck I decided to keep him around for seconds."

He doesn't know how it happens, exactly. One second he is standing with his hands balled into fists, listening to John talk, and the next his foot is in the centre of John's back. Kicking him off the edge.

He falls face first, jacket billowing over his back. Then the emergency protocols on the vortex manipulator kick in and, still falling through mid-air, he disappears.

Jack stands at the edge of the roof a long time, just staring at the blackness of the tarmac.

\--

Ianto flinches, at first, when Jack climbs into the bed behind him. Jack cups Ianto's bare shoulder in his hand to still him.

"It's just me," he murmurs into Ianto's neck. "Still have the key."

Ianto's body is tense against his chest, even as his voice is sleepy: "And you picked tonight to drop by for an unexpected visit?" He nestles his head deeper in his pillow, irritated.

"I'm sorry," Jack whispers. He can scarcely believe he's saying it. His heart doesn't even feel like it's beating. "I should have never left you alone."

"I don't even want you here," Ianto says, his voice hesitant, trembling, like he's swallowing down tears. "You're so egotistical, Jack. You think—you think I need you?"

"You can kick me out," Jack replies. "Say the word and I'll go."

When there's no answer, he places a kiss on the nape of Ianto's neck. In the dark, he can't see the broken circular bruise of a bite mark that he knows is there.

"Just don't think this makes up for anything," Ianto warns. He shrugs Jack's hand off his skin and the conversation is over.

\--

Ianto bullies him into his office, kicking the door closed behind them. He throws his arms around Jack's neck and crushes their lips together, fierce and desperate. Jack's hands hover at his waist, paralyzed, unable to touch him.

He doesn't know where this came from, where it's going. This morning, Ianto had slunk out of bed without a word, gone into the bathroom to change, and sat with his arms crossed, staring out the window, for the entire drive to the hub.

And now his mouth is on Jack's, his breath coming fast and hot, like he's hyperventilating, and his hands are smoothing over Jack's chest, sliding under his braces, hooking them with skilled thumbs and pulling them away.

And Jack is whinging "Ianto, _Ianto_ ," into his mouth, into his jaw, half a moan and half a protest.

"I missed you so much," Ianto gasps back, wriggling out of his jacket, tugging his tie apart. A red flush is creeping up his neck from inside his collar. "But you won't even _look_ at me, and I don't--"

"Shut up," Jack cuts him off. His hands find Ianto's collar, his knuckles brushing against the hot skin underneath. He pulls until the buttons on Ianto's shirt pop. He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to _think_ about it. He wants to pretend that Ianto is whole, lose himself in that lie. Ianto's chest under his shirt is mercifully bare, free of marks, just white skin and dark hair and the shape of his ribcage. Red in the dip of his throat. Everything as it should be. Jack leans in to mouth across his collarbone. "--I'm so sorry. Shut up."

Jack should be gentle with him, should ask him 'Is this okay?' and 'May I?' Instead he is lifting his hips, rutting against Ianto's thigh, running his hands up and down Ianto's body and catching furious little fistfuls of his hair.

And Ianto is undoing Jack's trousers, palming his erection through the fabric, groaning into Jack's ear, and he sounds _normal_ , he sounds _okay_ , and _maybe they can do this_.

Ianto sinks to his knees, dragging his hands down Jack's chest, Jack's thighs, as he goes. Jack's hips rise under his palms, his hands cupping Ianto's face and his fingers tracing the shape of his ears as Ianto parts Jack's trousers and pulls them down to his knees.

Jack looks at the top of Ianto's head, his mussed hair, biting his lip as his cock springs free from his pants and Ianto's hand is wrapping around it.

"You don't have to--" he protests, weakly, no sincerity behind it. And then Ianto is taking his cock into that slippery mouth, swirling his tongue, dragging his fingertips over the roundness of Jack's balls.

Ianto's eyes are closed, lost in what he's doing. Jack runs his fingers through his hair. Thrusts his hips tentatively, groaning when Ianto takes it. He thinks about coming on Ianto's face, on Ianto's lips, in Ianto's mouth, watching Ianto swallow and lick his lips and wipe his chin clean with his thumb like a boxer dabs blood from his lower lip.

He clutches at the back of Ianto's head, like he's done a hundred times before. "You like that, don't you?" he gasps out. Ianto is bobbing his head, quick, eager to please. "M-y cock in your mouth. Bet you could take it all, bet I could choke you with it and you'd just say 'Thank you', such a good boy..."

His wandering hands brush across Ianto's face, from his forehead back to the nape of his neck, smoothing his hair back. His thumb finds the butterfly plaster. It makes him think of blood.

Hips snapping forward sharply, he holds Ianto's head in place, ignoring that little tug of resistance in his neck. Coos, "Good boy, good boy," as Ianto gags.

It's good, it's good, he forgot how good, he forgot how good Ianto was, could be. And then there are hands slapped flat against his stomach. _Pushing_.

Jack blinks, feeling the tension in his eyes as they roll under his eyelids. He looks down.

Ianto has both hands pressed to his stomach. His palms are flat. His fingers are curling, scratching. His eyes are winced shut, seeping tears. His eyebrows are knit together, like he's confused. _Oh_.

 _Oh, no._

When Jack regains control of body from the shock and releases his grip, Ianto tumbles backward, landing hard on his arse. He scrabbles back a foot or so, covering his chin and mouth with his hand in disbelief, breathing hard through the cage of his fingers. He looks _afraid_. No. He's reining himself in. He looks _terrified._

 _Oh, no. No, no, no._

He looks so small, body language broken, knees bent at odd angles. When he finally makes eye contact with Jack, his watery eyes, and Jack sees the distrust in them, and sees the bruise on his cheek, and the plaster--

"Just... Just don't," Ianto groans, helplessly, before he scrambles to his feet and flees.

\--

 _It's the middle of the night when Jack's vortex manipulator beeps for the second time in as many days. Just hearing it ties his guts in knots, remembering John's parting words, the_ possibility _lurking behind them._

And then he receives the message: Ianto's face, red blood and white come and black ink saying

_His body is cold, like his blood has stopped in his veins. Ianto is hurt, and it's all John's fault-- no, it's Jack's fault too, they're in this together, feeding off of each other, Ianto in the crossfire._

Yeah, he gets the message.

\--

Jack stands leaning against the door-frame to the kitchenette, arms crossed over his chest and watching Ianto hunched over the sink, washing out mugs.

"I'm sorry," he tries, helplessly, and watches Ianto's shoulders stiffen, the fabric of his shirt pulling taut across them. Deep purple, today, the colour of the bruise on his neck. It's starting to fade.

"Don't be," Ianto replies, at length. His tone is embittered. "You have no reason to be."

Something thick swells in Jack's throat. "But I do," he protests.

"Jack, please--" a clatter and an angry slosh of water "--please don't do this."

"No. I have to say this." He steps into the kitchen, stands close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off of Ianto's back, close enough that he can inhale the scent of him, cologne and dish soap and shampoo and clean sweat.

Ianto stops washing, stands with his arms thrust elbow deep in the sink, unmoving. Under the water, his hands are probably balled into fists. "You 'have to say this'?" he laughs back, a little hysterical, "And is this little confession for my benefit, or to satisfy your own conscience? Be honest, Jack."

Jack's hands are in fists too. He wants to grab him by the shoulders, turn him, bend him backwards over the sink and kiss him until he shuts up, until he yields, like they used to. "I don't know," he grits out, "Does it matter? I wasn't there for you when you needed me, Ianto. I failed you. I put you in harm's way."

 _And then I took all that self-hate and turned it on you, because it was easier to be resentful of you than to admit responsibility, face the real reason why what happened affected me so deeply._

Coward, he doesn't say any of it.

He can almost hear Ianto's smile, that wistful one he gets sometimes when he resigns himself to accepting the world's cruelty and his place bearing the brunt of it. He takes a deep breath, shaky and soft, and replies, "It's my job to be in harm's way. It's your job to _put_ me in harm's way. That's what we _do_."

'Not like this,' Jack wants to argue, but then he is taking Ianto by the shoulders, turning and pulling him into a hug, waiting for the stiffness in his body to fade, for him to bury his nose in Jack's shoulder and give himself up, give up all his pain and his frustration and his fear to Jack, like he used to, before. He just adds it to their growing list of things that, against their better judgment, will remain unsaid.

Ianto slumps in his arms. His wet hands dampen the dip of Jack's spine through his shirt.

"It's going to be okay," he whispers.


End file.
